Basics: Search and SearchAlerts

You can use the search box in the ad listings, or the search page to
perform a search over all ads. Click on an ad's link to view the ad's
More Info page. When you are satisfied with the results of a search,
you can save it as a SearchAlert. SearchAlerts will perform the same
search on new ads received each day and send you an email message with
a summary of matching ads.

A basic search works by matching ANY word from your search phrase
against the contents of all ads. If you enter a long phrase, like "looking
for a Ford Mustang in the Los Angeles area", you will get many
matches from many ads that you are not interested in. For example, you
would match an ad with the word "looking" in it. Short and
specific phrases work best.

On the search page you can also select that you want EVERY word
in your search phrase to match. A search for "Ford Mustang Angeles"
with the EVERY option would require that all 3 words appear in the ad.

You can also customize an ANY search using "+" and
"-" modifier prefixes. Placing a "+" before a word
requires that word to be in the ad. Placing a "-" before a
word means that word must not appear in the ad. Be sure to still leave
a space between words, but not between the "+" or "-"
and the word they preceed. For example:

+Windows -Microsoft

would match ads with the word "windows", and not "microsoft".

If you like the results of your search, or want to search for future
ads, you can save the search phrase as a SearchAlert by clicking on
the SearchAlert button at the bottom of the search results. We will
save your search phrase and perform that same search every night over
just new ads we received that day. We will send an email message each
night with a summary of matching ads. You can view an ad from the message
by opening its URL in your Web browser. You can create multiple SearchAlerts,
and you can cancel a SearchAlert from your account page.